Tech reviewer misunderstood poetry

I suppose everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, no matter how
wrong it may be, but I'm not so sure that this means that any dilettante
should shout his profound ignorance as the voice of MIT in The Tech.

Last Thursday, MIT was highly privileged to host a truly great and much
distinguished poet, Sharon Olds, for a reading. The next day, Nicholas L.
Kelman '94 disgraced MIT with his obtuse review of her reading ["Sharon
Olds at Media Lab -- love her or hate her," Oct 19].

Engineers and scientists have been long stereotyped as lacking
understanding in the arts and humanities. Kelman's review only fosters this
stereotype, and does another great disservice to MIT by making it less
likely that a poet of Olds' caliber will ever read at MIT again. After all,
why should a distinguished poet read where quality poetry is apparently not
appreciated?

Kelman's taste is clearly bad, but he seems not even to have been paying
much attention to the reading. He says her poems dealt "almost entirely
with bad sexual experience," while, in reality, she read several joyous
poems, several pained poems, and the rest dealt simultaneously with both
the joy and pain of life.

Kelman's assertion that Olds "obviously feels that to be open and in love
is in some way weak" could only be obvious to someone who was not listening
and who has no clue. It seems almost as if Kelman was too busy count-

ing how many times the word "penis" was said, to pay attention to anything
else.

Kelman is also on crumbling philosophical ground. He writes such
inanities as, "Life is tough, but you're always better off than someone
else, and it's a shame that poets like Olds do not seem to realize this."
Does Kelman expect anyone to believe that only the most suffering person in
the world should write about pain?

Olds writes about the entire spectrum of emotions. Yes, she writes about
pain, but she also writes about happiness. These are the two poles about
which human life revolves, and any writer who ignores either one of them is
ignoring half of what makes us human. And, yes, "love really does exist,"
but apparently

Kelman has never experienced it, or he would know that there is no love
without pain.

Contrary to Kelman's assertions, there is nothing suicidal in Olds'
poetry. It is life affirming, acknowledging all the feelings that are
necessary for life, both love and hate, pleasure and pain.

In addition to Kelman's shortcomings as a critical analyst of art, it
seems he can't even get simple facts straight. Olds read nothing from
Satan Says as Kelman states in his review. Five minutes with a copy
of the book could have made his article more accurate, but Kelman has
proven himself not just a lazy listener, but a lazy reporter as well.